New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez celebrates the Jets’ victory over the New England Patriots in September. (REUTERS)
Mark Sanchez didn’t come here to kiss Tom Brady’s rings. Sanchez is here now to win his first Super Bowl before Brady wins his fourth.
Their duel Monday night at New England will go a long way toward determining who gets to his destination first, and the Sanchise has his eyes on the prize.
Brady is in the midst of an MVP season. He has thrown 199 consecutive passes without an interception. On the surface, it would appear as though Sanchez is overmatched.
It ain’t necessarily so.
Here is why:
For one, Sanchez doesn’t have to play against Rex Ryan’s defense.
For two, Sanchez will have Santonio Holmes this time.
For three, Bill Belichick dared Sanchez to beat him in September, and all Sanchez did was throw three touchdown passes and get the better of Brady (two TDs, two INTs) in the Jets’ 28-14 victory, the second game of Sanchez’s second season.
For four, it is not as if Sanchez and Brady have nothing in common: Women consider both of them hunks, and the bigger the game, the better they both play.
Jets-Patriots is a monstrous regular-season game. It is the biggest game Sanchez has played since the AFC Championship that ended his rookie season.
In Mark They Trust.
“Mark Sanchez is very capable of outplaying Tom Brady again,” Darrelle Revis said. “But it’s really the Patriots’ defense that he has to outplay. He did it before, he can always do it again.”
Can he outduel Brady again?
“I think he can for sure,” Dustin Keller said. “We have a lot of weapons on the field, and I think he’s getting better and better each week at utilizing all of his weapons.”
But Brady (23 TDs, 4 INTs) is playing at an MVP level.
“Yeah, he’s playing really well, but I think Mark’s improving every single week,” Keller said.
Can he outduel Brady again?
“Yeah, absolutely,” Matt Slauson said. “All we have to do is play to our potential — that’s all we need.”
Brandon Moore couldn’t help but notice the telltale signs of a young quarterback intensifying his focus at practice Monday — schooling his receivers, reviewing matters with offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer.
“You can already tell he’s really into this game, probably a little more than weeks before, which is what you want,” Moore said.
“He’ll be ready to play on Monday,” Jerricho Cotchery said. “It’s not a Sanchez-versus-Brady thing, it’s the New York Jets versus the New England Patriots.”
That will prove to be true only if the Jets can unleash the Ground & Pound in all its fury.
“I think we can do anything we want,” Slauson said. “Obviously, our passing game has been taking off because we have the playmakers to do that. And I also think that teams have been constantly stacking the box against us because they’re afraid of our running game, which they should be, and I think that’s why we’ve been struggling a little bit in the running game.
” ‘Cause it’s kinda hard to run against eight- or nine-man boxes. But that opens up throws all over the field, and we’ve been taking advantage of that.”
Slauson was regarded as a weak link on the offensive line in Week 2. No more.
“In past years, there was nobody on our line viewed as the weak link,” Slauson said. “And Alan [Faneca] leaves, and I take over, everybody’s like, ‘Uh-oh.’ But it was my goal to not be viewed as that. It was to take over for Alan, play at the same level as him, and then, continue to grow.”
Holmes missed the first Patriots game while serving his four-game suspension. He’s now Sanchez’s Go-To Guy during crunch time.
“You’re adding an explosive playmaker,” Cotchery said. “You have a lot of guys in the league that are explosive — they can run past you and all of those things — but they can’t make plays. This guy’s explosive, and he makes plays. You have to account for that. It’s gonna keep you up late nights.”
Sanchez won’t be keeping Belichick up late nights, but he’s made giant strides since Week 2. Sanchez opened eyes in his first playoffs when he completed 41 of 68 passes for 539 yards, four touchdowns and two interceptions. In Brady’s first playoffs, he was 60 for 97 for 572 yards, with one touchdown (in the Super Bowl victory over the Rams) and one interception.
“The bigger the game, the more he steps up,” Keller said, “and I think that’s the same with a lot of guys on this team — L.T., Jason Taylor, [Antonio] Cromartie — all these guys, when it comes to these big games, it seems like they just step up that much more.”
Sanchez is not Brady. No one is. But the Jets understand this much: The chances of Sanchez outplaying Brady again are considerably better than Gisele Bundchen leaving Brady for Rex Ryan.